by R. L. King
Both Lamar and Marilee looked relieved. “I hope this is what you’re looking for,” Marilee said, nodding toward the flyer. “I hope you can do it. And I’ll pray for your safe return.”
Spontaneously, Verity threw her arms around the old lady and gave her a hug. “You keep yourselves safe,” she told her, her voice shaking a little bit. Then she pulled back and smiled. “Hey, you don’t happen to have a fake ID with my name on it in that cart, do you?”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“You’re sure about this?” Jason asked. It wasn’t the first time he’d done so.
It was eight o’clock the night after they’d last seen the Forgotten. He, Verity, and Stone were in San Francisco, in the front room of the small suite they’d rented at a motel that wasn’t too far from the club.
“Jason, stop being a wuss,” Verity told him, rolling her eyes. “And quit worrying about me. I’ll be fine.”
Stone’s students had come through not only with information about the club and advice on what to wear so they would blend in as much as possible (and where to buy it), but one of them had also put him in touch with an art major who was known in student circles as a wizard with fake IDs. Stone had sent Jason along with Verity to approach her, since he didn’t think a professor trying to obtain a fake ID for an underage girl would go over too well. The young woman was a little hesitant at first, but changed her mind when Verity offered double her normal fee. By early that morning, she had produced an extremely realistic-looking driver’s license proclaiming Verity to be 21 years old.
Verity had enjoyed the subsequent shopping trip immensely; her two male companions, not so much. Stone and Jason spent much of their time trying to be as inconspicuous as possible and not to look like they were as uncomfortable as they were. Verity, meanwhile, moved around the stores like she’d spent her life there, picking out items both for herself and for them. When she’d finished, both of them had to admit that she’d done a good job finding them outfits that wouldn’t make them feel completely ridiculous: for Jason, she’d chosen black jeans, a studded black belt, combat boots, a tight black T-shirt with the logo of an industrial band he’d never heard of, and a black leather biker jacket (she’d declared that his own leather jacket, which was brown, was simply “all wrong.”) She had even more fun with Stone, deciding he needed to look “more formal.” When she got done with him, his look was reminiscent of a German SS officer, albeit without any of the Nazi iconography. She’d put him in a black military-style tunic, black pants tucked into tall shiny black boots, and an impressive-looking black overcoat. When he got a look at himself in the mirror, he glared theatrically at his reflection. “Where’s my bloody riding crop?” he asked, half-sourly, half-amused.
Verity herself looked like she was finally able to dress the way she wanted to. Her outfit consisted of her own black biker jacket that was similar to Jason’s, a tight leather top that laced up the front, a black leather spiked dog-collar choker, black miniskirt, fishnet stockings with artful holes in them, and her black Doc Martens. Jason took one look at her and started to say something, but her glare silenced him. He had to concede, albeit grudgingly, that she carried the look off. She didn’t look vulnerable— she looked completely in control of herself and more than a little intimidating. It scared him a bit. What was his tomboy kid sister turning into?
She had also picked up some hair dye and cosmetics, and when they got back to the hotel after permitting themselves dinner at a good restaurant for a change, she locked herself in the bathroom for an hour while Jason and Stone sat out front and went over the crude map of the club that the student had given them. Unfortunately Stone hadn’t been able to track down either of the two other students who were familiar with the lower level, but at least they wouldn’t have to go in completely blind.
Stone was arranging his various magical items in the pockets of his overcoat when Verity emerged from the bathroom. He and Jason both stared at her with wide eyes. She’d dyed her hair jet-black and used some sort of gel to spike it up into points, and done her face in dramatic makeup that made her look paler than she was and emphasized her large dark eyes. Her lips were blood red. “Whatcha think?” she asked grinning.
“I think you’re having entirely too much fun with this,” Stone told her.
“Well, you did say we had to blend in, right?”
Jason didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure what to say, and a little afraid that if he spoke up, he might say something he’d later regret. In many ways, this new transformation in his sister was causing him more mental difficulty than the entirety of the insane and magical proceedings that he’d been dealing with for the past couple of weeks. She was becoming an adult, and there was no stopping it. He couldn’t keep treating her like she was twelve, even though that was the last time he’d really known her. He had to let her grow up, regardless of whether he approved of the way she was doing it. He knew that in less than a month she’d be eighteen and technically he wouldn’t have any control over her anymore—not that he did now. “We ready to do this?” he finally asked.
Stone, who’d been smiling at Verity’s enthusiasm, sobered. “Ready as we can be,” he said.
Will to Power was on the waterfront, a mile or so off the main part of the Embarcadero. Here, glitzy souvenir shops and seafood restaurants gave way to derelict warehouses and ugly, looming industrial buildings. “Definitely not the posh end of town,” Stone commented. “But that’s not too surprising, given its focus.”
They were in a cab; the driver was a dark-skinned, Middle Eastern man who barely spoke English, but who had given them a strange look when they’d told him their destination. He didn’t comment, though. Jason figured they were just a few more of the tourist weirdos he had to endure daily.
He leaned back in his seat and looked idly out the window as the cab inched through the thick Friday night traffic; he hadn’t been to San Francisco since he was a kid up here with his dad for a vacation, and he didn’t remember much about it except the Golden Gate Bridge and the tourist part of Fisherman’s Wharf. They had come past the Wharf, but they soon left the lit-up tourist area and moved into a part of the docks where most tourists weren’t brave enough to venture these days. He wondered if he could spot any of the Forgotten symbols, then almost immediately noticed one spray-painted on the side of a rotting warehouse: the circle, X, and squiggly line. Bad place. Danger. He touched Stone’s arm and pointed it out; the mage nodded. “I’ve been noticing them for a while,” he murmured over Verity, who was seated between them.
“All the bad ones, I take it?”
He nodded soberly. “Haven’t seen any others. Wherever this place is, the Forgotten seem to avoid it like the plague.”
Indeed, they had not seen one homeless person or group for the last fifteen minutes, despite the fact that the buildings they were passing were rundown and many were abandoned. It looked like a prime area to be colonized by a few enterprising Forgotten groups, but none were in evidence.
“Weird,” Jason said. “I wonder if even the normal homeless groups avoid it.”
“Quite probably. Remember what Marilee said about homeless people up here disappearing without a trace?”
“You think that has something to do with this club?”
Stone shrugged. “No idea, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Jason sighed. “You know, I’d give just about anything right now to be able to call in some heavy hitters on this. It feels wrong to me to be playing Batman, trying to solve this on our own. We ought to be able to call the cops, or the government, or somebody who’s better equipped to deal with it. It just feels wrong that they’re the ones we can’t call, because they’re probably mixed up in the whole thing, and there’s no way to know who’s clean and who isn’t.” He shook his head and dropped his voice even further, glancing at the cabbie to make sure he wasn’t listening. “You know, taking care of this guy, whoever he is, isn’t going to solve the problem. There’s still gonna be all the second-tier Ev
il in the cops and the politicians and the business leaders. What’s to say one of them won’t just step up and take over the operation?”
“That’s a damned good question,” Stone said. “And I don’t have an answer for you, except to say that, honestly, this probably won’t end it. The best we can hope is that it tosses whatever organization they have into disarray for a while, and perhaps gives us—and others—time to deal with what’s left before it can reorganize.”
“That doesn’t sound very encouraging.” Jason shook his head, still looking out the window.
The cab was slowing down now, working its way over to the right lane. Stone, Jason, and Verity all switched their attention to the front window. “Here it is,” the cabbie said, double-parking next to a group of motorcycles.
Jason didn’t know what he expected to see, but it wasn’t anything like the reality. The club was in a large, old industrial building of indeterminate type, its entire front-facing wall painted black. WILL TO POWER shone in glowing purple neon above a set of windowless, black, padded double doors, and a poster-sized version of the flyer Marilee had pulled from her cart was tacked up behind glass to the right of the doors. Even from inside the cab, the three of them could hear the pounding beat of the music, muted but still quite loud. A large crowd milled around outside, smoking and chatting. Most of them were dressed similarly to Stone, Jason, and Verity: lots of leather, military styles, skintight vinyl, and goth-wear. Most were young—early to mid-twenties—but there were a surprising number of people Stone’s age or even older.
They exited the cab, and Stone paid the driver while Jason and Verity got a look around. Jason noticed two beefy guys in tight black club-logo T-shirts and jeans standing on either side of the doors. He watched for a moment as a group went up to them, noticing that they were collecting the cover charge and doing cursory weapons checks, but didn’t appear to be paying that much attention to checking IDs.
Verity tapped his arm. “Look,” she whispered, pointing.
Jason looked. They were hard to spot this time, chalked nearly at sidewalk level on the side of the building near the corner, and only three inches or so high. But there were five of them in a row: “Bad Place” Forgotten symbols. “This must be a really bad place,” he muttered under his breath. “I hope that means we picked the right one.”
Stone rejoined them. “Shall we, then?”
The bouncers didn’t give them a second look—including Verity and her fake ID—but just collected their money and waved them in with a bored “Enjoy the show.” Beyond the padded doors was a steep, black-painted stairway lined with posters and flyers from bands who had previously played at the club, along with a lot of graffiti. Most of the latter seemed to be names and phone numbers, band names, and general obscenities regarding one band or another. Jason didn’t spot anything that looked like gang tags, and surprisingly he could find no evidence of Forgotten symbols. When he mentioned this to Stone as the three of them were borne along up the stairs by the rest of the crowd, he shook his head. “If you were Forgotten, would you have any desire at all to come in here?”
“Good point,” Jason had to admit. Both of them had to shout over the music.
The stairway ascended what appeared to be one or two floors, and then opened out onto a large, crowded dance floor. The music, no longer muffled even by one wall, was nearly deafening now. The three of them stepped out of the flow of traffic and stood to the side so they could take in the scene.
It was impossible to see everything from where they were—it was evident that the place was designed in such a way that it wouldn’t allow unrestricted sightlines to much of anything. There were no windows. The only things they could see clearly were the enormous purple-neon-rimmed bar on the other side of the room, and the stage far off to their right. Small tables dotted the landscape, spread out and hidden back in alcoves so no more than two or three of them were near each other, and all around them people stood in little knots holding drinks or writhed on another dance floor in front of the stage. The band currently performing consisted of a slim young woman behind an impressive looking synth, a dark-haired man in sunglasses playing guitar, another man they couldn’t quite see on drums, and an animated lead singer with short-cropped, bright blond hair and a military-looking outfit. There was no way to make out any of the song’s lyrics between the distortion, the volume, and the fact that the lead singer was growling into the mic. The crowd was eating it up, though.
“Where do we start?” Jason shouted over the music.
Verity tapped his arm and pointed to a miraculously empty table near one of the walls. They hurried over and commandeered it. Once they were seated, Jason leaned in toward Stone and yelled, “Is your magic thing buzzing yet?”
Stone raised an eyebrow, but pulled the little cube out of his pocket and held it in one hand, shielded by his other. The crystals were glowing faintly. “It is,” he said. “As I expected—I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find a decent contingent of Evil in here.”
“That doesn’t help much,” Jason said. “What do we do—just wander around until we find something? I don’t want to split up.” At Verity’s glare, he glared right back at her. “I’m sorry, V, but I’m still responsible for you for another month, and there’s no way I’m gonna let you wander around a place like this by yourself.”
“He’s right,” Stone said. “I don’t think it would be the safest thing for any of us to wander around here alone. It’s unlikely we’ll be spotted or recognized, but if that were to happen, I think our chances would improve significantly if we remained in a group.”
Verity nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Most of these people look like fun, but I’ve seen a few sleazeballs, too.”
“I don’t think what we’re looking for is out here, though,” Stone said. “We need to investigate the dungeon area.”
“Where is it?” Jason asked. The crude map Stone’s student had provided didn’t include the entrance to the dungeons. “We can’t exactly walk up to somebody and ask, ‘Hey, can you tell us where the bondage dungeon is?’”
Verity grinned. “Sure we can. You just have to do it the right way.” She started to stand, then waved Jason off as he reached for her to pull her back down. “Just keep an eye on me. I’m not going far.” She pointed at a balding, middle-aged man dressed in a leather jacket with a mesh shirt underneath, too-tight pants, and a dog collar similar to hers. He stood about ten feet away from their table on the periphery of the dance floor. “Gonna go talk to him for a minute.” Before Jason could protest further, she was gone.
Jason and Stone did not take their eyes off her while she sidled up to the man, close enough that their leather-clad shoulders touched, and appeared to be saying something to him. Everything about her body language suggested that she found him the most attractive man in the club, and it was everything Jason could do not to leap up and punch the guy’s lights out. “Steady,” Stone cautioned with a hand on his arm. “Let’s see if she can pull this off.”
The man’s pasty face broke into something resembling a leer as it became clear that this attractive young woman seemed interested in him. He said something to her, to which she replied with a predatory smile. He said something else, pointed across the room toward the bar, then reached out as if to touch her. She danced deftly out of his grasp, shaking her head and waving her finger at him in a ‘naughty boy’ gesture. He looked briefly crushed, then brightened, said one more thing to her, and moved off into the crowd.
Verity came back over to the table about three seconds before Jason was about to jump up and drag her back. She dropped down into her seat with a long sigh. “What a perv,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I took a chance—with an outfit like that he might have just been a leather daddy with bad taste in clothes, but no, he was a straight perv. I told him I was looking for a little more interesting action, and he practically drooled on me.”
“Did you find out where the dungeon is?” Stone asked.
She n
odded. “The entrance is over there past the bar. It’s on the first floor, which is why we had to come up here to get to the club. There’s no other way in for the public besides through here. Supposedly you don’t get in without an invitation, but he said you can bribe your way in, and women and cute guys pretty much just have to smile at the door guy.” She looked the two of them up and down. “I think you two qualify. We should be okay.”
“How did you get rid of him?” Jason asked, hooking a thumb toward where Perv Guy had disappeared while doing his best to ignore what she’d said about him and Stone.
She chuckled. “Oh, that’s easy. I told him to get out of my sight. I think he thought I was a dominatrix. Which means he’ll probably be looking for me once we get in there, but I’ll just tell him to lick my boots or something and we’ll be good to go.”
Jason looked at her sideways. “You know way too much about this stuff. I’m not gonna ask you where you learned it.”
She shrugged. “Hey, it was pretty boring when I was in the nuthatch. I did a lot of reading.”
Stone stood. “Well, then. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can think of many places I’d rather be spending my time. Shall we get on with this?”
Jason was all for that. The sooner they got done and out of here, the happier he’d be. This wasn’t his kind of club even if it wasn’t a haven for Grand Poobah Evil of this part of the state, and much as he was loath to admit it, Verity’s comfort level in here didn’t sit well with him at all. He wondered sometimes—often, actually—how she managed to deal so well with the aftermath of the five years she’d gone through. Nobody just shrugged off that kind of situation. He kept catching himself watching her as if expecting her to lose it any minute. The fact that she hadn’t yet he attributed less to Stone’s blocking magic and more to a growing fear that it was building up and getting ready to blow at the smallest provocation. Can’t worry about that now, though, he told himself, hurrying to catch up to Stone and Verity. Gotta deal with this now. Time for the rest of it later. He might not be able to cast lasers from his hands, but his fists were in pretty good shape, and he wasn’t about to let anything happen to Verity and Stone while he had the power to prevent it.